“We have to make it quick.”
I’m sure there was some deeper motive as I turned my back on Echo and my mother, ignoring my captain’s orders as I rushed back up to the light. Perhaps I really did have mutiny in my bones. I wasn’t thinking of much save survival, though, and as soon as my boots hit the gundeck, Fahr and I raced for the monks, lidded to keep the balls from scattering across the floor. Through the ports, I could see theEndorathilas she swept broadside, fierce as a tusk cat through the trees.
Bergy leaned out between the guns.
“Fire, boys!” he shouted, and the cannons discharged their fury in succession, filling the gundeck with smoke.
Dev grabbed a shot and tossed it my way, and the scars immediately sprang to life once the laced lead touched my skin. I breathed it in, feeling the chimeric shoot up my arms to my chest, tightening my throat and cracking my teeth, pushing my eyes out of their sockets and threatening to split my skull. It shot down my torso to my belly and my spine. It was deep, visceral magik that crackled from my fingers and my toes. I didn’t care if it burned its way into my guts. It felt good to feel this strong, this powerful, this bonded with rune.
Hels yes, I was a runechaser and proud of it.
“Back to the hold!” he barked.
We grabbed two balls each, turning toward the stepladder when the final array hit.
It was like being underwater. All sound dulled; all movement slowed. I was blown off my feet and slowly sailed across the gundeck, into Bergy, Flip, and their nine-pounder. I saw Flip’s head snap back as he struck the bulwark. I watched Bergy’s blood spray across the cannon’s black bore as his chest blew apart before the cannon herself greeted me with an iron kiss. I saw stars and shadow, suns and moons, all in the span of a heartbeat or two.
Sleep, I told myself. I could cast chimeric later. Just a bit of sleep.
Wayward girl.
It felt good to surrender, just this once.
Wayward woman, slip away.
I don’t know how long I sank in the darkness, but at some point, a voice rippled through the blackness.
“Blue,” it said. “Blue, come on.”
“What?”
“Blue, we’ve struck the colors.”
I pushed myself to my elbows.
“We surrendered?”
“On deck, now, or they’ll kill us where we lie.”
Surrender? Thanavar?
Dev grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet.Rhi’Ahrwarriors strode up behind him, holding both sword and cyr. We were boarded. We’d surrendered. They grabbed Dev’s arms and shoved him toward the stepladder. They came for me next, and I let them, taking one last look around the gundeck. It was devastated, smoking, and empty of crew.
How long had I been out? Was I dreaming? Was I dead?
TheTouchstonenever surrendered.
TheRhi’Ahrshoved me up the hatch, and once I stepped onto the main, a hand grabbed me by the neck and flung me forward, and I staggered across the planks. I blinked in the brilliant sunslight, my heart sinking at the sight of the enemy ship abroadside, her corvus hooks in our bulwarks, her boots stomping along our decks. Uniformly tall, elegant, and elven,Rhi’Ahrmarched across the main, uniforms like a gold-and-white wave.
They had corralled a small group of seamages on the forecastle, and officers at the wheel. My heart lurched as I saw Thanavar held between four warriors. He could have flown away at any point, I reckoned, left us on board to regroup ashore. But he remained, bloody, beaten, defiant, and proud. Fahr and Smoke stood nearby, where the quarterdeck meets the main, but Buck and Broom were with the seamages afore. I was surprised that Broom had made it topside. In fact, I was surprised he was even alive, given how he had been impaled by so many staves on the deck below.
So few left.
TheRhi’Ahrshoved me into line next to Fahr and Smoke, and a gangway was struck between our two ships. I couldn’t help but stare as a man dressed in more silver and gold than a king’s table swept onto our deck.
Nearly as tall as Thanavar but broader, he had golden hair pulled back in an elaborate weave of braids and knots. A sword swung at his hip, and a cloak flowed behind him like a wake. He strode up to Thanavar and reached to take a cyr from aRhi’Ahrbeside. He studied it for a long moment, tested the weight in his bejewelled hand, before driving the hilt into Thanavar’s belly.
“No!” I cried as the captain doubled over and dropped to his knees.
